And mind you, I thought they were plenty fuckin’ dumb.
So, former FBI director James Comey posts a pix of seashells on a beach arranged to spell “86 47,” the first two digits of which any old retired copy editor knows mean “refuse to serve” and/or “eject or ban.”
And Kristi Kreme, Tulsi Gobshite and Cash Patel get their tactical boxers in a Kevlar bunch and screech that he’s calling for Beelzebozo’s assassination and/or “issuing a hit” on him.
It’s like an unfunny reboot of “Get Smart,” with Mel Gibson at the helm instead of Mel Brooks. Linus had a better security blanket than this.
Screenshot lifted from NM Sen. Martin Heinrich’s website.
Another day, another steaming heap of some punk-ass shit.
Dr. Carla D. Hayden — the first woman and first African-American to head the Library of Congress — got the ol’ heave-ho yesterday in a curt, two-sentence email from Trent Morse, deputy director of White House personnel (see above).
New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Subcommittee on the Legislative Branch, hit the high points of the doctor’s curriculum vitae for us and had a few thoughts of his own on her unceremonious dismissal:
“President Trump fired our nation’s Librarian, Dr. Carla Hayden, by email at 6:56pm tonight, taking his assault on America’s libraries to a new level.
“Over the course of her tenure, Dr. Hayden brought the Library of Congress to the people, with initiatives that reached into rural communities and made the Library accessible to all Americans, in person and online.
“While President Trump wants to ban books and tell Americans what to read – or not to read at all, Dr. Hayden has devoted her career to making reading and the pursuit of knowledge available to everyone.
“Be like Dr. Hayden.”
I can’t wait for the day when we get to give the shove to these chickenshit vandals. Two sentences? Try two words: “Fuck off.”
In the meantime, I suppose we can look forward to seeing Enrique Tarrio sworn in as Dr. Hayden’s replacement. The recently pardoned seditionist needs a job of work, and who knows? He may have checked out a few “Punisher” comic books from the prison library when he wasn’t busy finking for the John Laws.
Looked like the Martians were working out on Cedar Crest last night.
It was fury in the foothills most of yesterday and well into the night.
The rain started as I was driving home after dropping Herself at the Sunport. Then came the wind, a few rounds of dime-sized hail shotgunning the backyard maple (which shed leaves and one sizable dead limb) and the roses (still plenty of them left for the deer to eat), and more rain.
And finally the light show captured above.
Herself’s flight to Maine was not without drama. First Southwest couldn’t fuel her plane because of lightning. Then the fuel truck didn’t have enough go-juice to top off the tanks, so another had to be pressed into service.
By the time she got off the tarmac an hour late it was clear that making her connecting flight in Baltimore was going to be iffy. The plan had been to grab a bite to eat and chill a bit between planes, but you know what they say about plans.
So Herself touches down with just enough time to hit the bathroom, join the queue for boarding, and find her seat … after which there was another extended wait for a couple dozen passengers who had been delayed for reason(s) unknown. She could’ve had a sitdown meal, an adult beverage, and a nap, but nooooo. …
The long and the short of it? A flight that was supposed to arrive at stupid-thirty in Portland instead touched down at extra-double-stupid thirty.
And it’s raining there, too.
I stayed up way past my bedtime to provide moral support encoded in bad language. Once Herself was finally settling into her hotel room I turned out the light and … and then Thor turned it back on, as you see.
The flickering electrical display that brought me out of a fitful doze was utterly silent. No thunder at all. Thor was pulling his punches. Or maybe Mjölnir needed recharging. Odin knows I do. And Herself still faces a couple hours in a car this morning before she reaches what the airlines like to call her “final destination.”
Whenever the Thunder God gets his iHammer back up to four bars maybe he can have a couple swings at Beelzebozo. The senile old fool currently propped up as “president” of the “United States” doesn’t know what the Declaration of Independence means or what the Constitution requires of him.
It’s not the infamous “writer’s block.” The problem is that the only thing I want to write about is all the you-know-what coming from you-know-where.
And isn’t there enough of that sort of thing available pretty much everywhere? Every day? Every second?
I find myself belatedly having some sympathy for the mouth-breathers who squealed like maladjusted brakes whenever my columns would veer off the course laid out in the race bible and careen into the real world. Which, if we’re being brutally honest here, was pretty much all the time.
“Stick to cycling!” they’d wail.
“Everything is political!” I’d bark.
Now I’m just a blogger and don’t have to meet a regular deadline or wrestle with nervous editors, penny-pinching publishers, and illiterate critics.
Too harsh? Hey, I read the letters.
“Go back to waxing your chain, Spanky,” I’d grumble. “Leave writing to the pros.”
These days I write for free, because I like it. Anyone who doesn’t like it is likewise free, to fuck off.
Still, I’m not entirely sociopathic. I have you hardcores, my small, deeply disturbed audience, to consider. And I don’t want every single brain-dump here to be of the rancid, greasy, orange variety. There are only so many different ways to say ‘BOHICA!'”
Thing is, to write about anything else feels vaguely criminal. Borderline treasonous. Anyone with a voice, however small, should be sounding off like they have a pair.
What’s a poor mad dog to do?
Well, you may imagine my delight when I stumbled across another scribbler in similar straits. Chuck Wendig is a published author — like, of actual books, an’ shit — and he has a new one due out April 29, “The Staircase in the Woods.”
I first noticed him when The New York Times included “Staircase” in a roundup of 24 new works of fiction to read. Then his name came up again over at Daring Fireball, the free-ranging blog by John Gruber, who promoted this “crackerjack essay” Wendig had written while trying to write about other stuff and promote the new book and basically just live his fucking life.
It’s titled “What It Feels Like, Right Now.” Here’s a sample:
Writing is hard right now. Releasing a book is hard. Promoting that book is, say it with me, hard. It’s not trivial but it feels trivial. Like performing a puppet show in the town square as the town burns down. It feels good to do it and you want others to feel good while reading it but you also know feeling good right now also feels somehow bad, and maybe that’s one of the most fucked up things of all. They didn’t take joy but they took the joy of feeling joy away, made it feel wrong and strange. Turned happiness into a hot stove.
Top-shelf stuff here, folks. Rage and comedy, despair and hope, the whole ball of wax. Writing as an escape and an act of resistance. Inspirational.
In fact, I liked it so much that I immediately ordered up his new book from my favorite local bookstore, Page 1 Books.
Shit, I’d have given him the $32.29 just for the essay.
Mad Blog Media 